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White House Keeps a Grip On Its News

When he stands before the blue curtain of the White House press briefing area, Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press secretary, often seems downright chummy with reporters as they quiz him about the news of the day.

But in the privacy of his well-ordered office, he is not always so complimentary.

''There can be a tendency,'' he said in an interview, ''of reporters kind of peacocking in front of each other to show each other and their editors, 'I'm the one, I can ask the same question a different way for the 18th time to get the press secretary to say something different.' ''

And the same goes for reporters, who often put on a cordial face during Mr. Fleischer's briefings but, privately, are often fuming.

''If the National Hurricane Center were as stingy with its information, there would be thousands dead,'' John Roberts, the senior CBS News White House correspondent, deadpanned in his West Wing broadcast booth the other day.

Tensions have escalated far beyond the inevitable grousing between press secretaries and journalists, who said they could not remember a White House that was more grudging or less forthcoming in informing the press. Complaints from the White House press corps ranged from the paucity of presidential press conferences to fewer briefings from administration policy experts to instances where they believe they have been frozen out by White House officials when they ask questions considered out of bounds.

The White House in turn says these complaints are the result of its strict adherence to its own message, and a break from the tradition of gossip-mongering in the press.

Certainly, there have been strains between reporters and the press secretary in previous White Houses, and every administration has tried to prevent leaks and control spin.

Media relations during the Reagan White House had so soured that they prompted a book, ''On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,'' by Mark Hertsgaard, an author and commentator. The first Bush White House faced complaints about lack of press access during the Persian Gulf war. And the Clinton White House was so aggressive about influencing reporters that it even added a lawyer, Lanny Davis, to its press operation.

But complaints about White House secrecy have reached new levels. White House reporters say they have been given very limited information about the cost, the length, and the risk of any military action in Iraq. They also contend that after Sept. 11, many more policy and governmental decisions are considered off limits for questions because of national security.

Reporters said they have seen some cracks in the fortress recently, as inside information about rifts within the administration over its plans for Iraq has buzzed through their phone lines and into their stories. Even so, reporters still are far from satisfied.

''We have a gap between information the public wants to know and information the White House has provided,'' said Bob Deans, the Cox Newspapers White House correspondent and the president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

Laurence McQuillan, a veteran White House correspondent for USA Today, said, ''From a reporter's standpoint, they make the Clinton White House seem like a sieve that was gushing information.''

''In this administration, the controls on information are tighter than in any other one I have covered,'' said Bill Plante, a CBS News White House correspondent, who has reported on the presidency since 1980.

Reporters also protest that they get little opportunity to directly quiz the president. Invitations to peek in on meetings between the president and foreign leaders, they say, do not come as often as they did in the past. Where Mr. Clinton had given 73 news conferences at this point in his presidency -- most jointly with foreign leaders and other officials -- Mr. Bush has given 36, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University who tracks the White House communications operation. George Herbert Walker Bush had given 61 in his first 21 months.

White House officials are proud of the discipline that reporters grouse about, and say they have such a relatively low leak factor because the president does not tolerate them, and officials have no interest in them. Still, Mr. Fleischer contends that reporters get as much information as needs to be available at the appropriate time, and have ample opportunity to ask questions at various presidential photo opportunities, pool events and appearances with foreign leaders, which the White House puts at over 100.

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With talk of war increasing, the White House press briefing room has become more confrontational. There, a fierce joust plays out day after day, as members of the White House press corps devise ways to draw Mr. Fleischer out in greater detail on the administration's case against Saddam Hussein -- and Mr. Fleischer refuses to venture beyond his message of the day, often carried live on cable news.

For many reporters and producers, the briefings have become an exercise in frustration, a White House-produced television program in which they say they feel like unamused straight men, there to set up policy punchlines for Mr. Fleischer.

''I think Ari goes into the briefing with a message that he intends to deliver,'' said Campbell Brown, an NBC News White House correspondent, ''and what questions are asked is almost irrelevant.''

Mr. Fleischer often does seem to stick to practiced catch phrases. Early this month, as the administration worked hard for stiffer United Nations weapons inspections terms, Mr. Fleischer warned six times that Mr. Hussein would play ''cat-and-mouse games.'' During the same briefing, he repeated six times that the president would not accept a congressional war resolution that ''ties his hands.''

Mr. Fleischer said it was his policy to share new information only when the administration is ready to do so. ''Why do they have to have everything spoon-fed ahead of time?'' he asked.

Certain bits of information, he said, are withheld for good reason when the president is weighing action in Iraq on one front and considering homeland defense on the other. He said, for instance, that it was not in the administration's interests to divulge how far it was willing to compromise in negotiating over the congressional war resolution.

Mr. Fleischer expressed exasperation at what he considered to be a silly -- and ultimately futile -- exercise by reporters to prod him to say something controversial.

''Reporters who are polite, who gather their information with honey instead of vinegar, are going to get farther,'' he said. ''I think the days of the shouting, the screaming, cynical approach have really ended.''

In what he says is a move to bring decorum to the briefing room, and keep reporters from screaming over one another, Mr. Fleischer has a system of methodically calling on reporters row by row. This way, he says, everybody gets a chance to ask a question.

But reporters see something else at play: a strategy to keep questioning from building momentum on a single issue. Each reporter is working a different agenda, and often two sitting side by side will be working on two completely different stories.

There are those who everybody in the room knows will be off-topic, like Raghubir Goyal, a reporter for India Globe, who sometimes sits in one of the front rows when there is a vacancy. He is primarily interested in the tensions between India and Pakistan. The other reporters have taken to calling him ''Goyal the foil,'' contending that Mr. Fleischer, like previous press secretaries, relies on him to break up tense moments.

A few journalists here also complained that phone calls went unreturned for long periods after they either asked tough questions in briefings or produced stories that officials did not like.

In the best-known example, Bennett Roth, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, after asking a question about the president's daughters, was warned by Mr. Fleischer that it had been ''noted in the building.''

''It was probably an imprecise way of saying 'the president doesn't appreciate your invasion of his privacy,' '' Mr. Fleischer said, adding there were no consequences otherwise, and never are. ''There's a tendency by reporters to wildly exaggerate the trauma they go through so they have better excuses for their editors for why they don't have a story.''

Even Mr. Fleischer's Democratic predecessors said the strategy of limiting information to the press was effective. While he said he was more accommodating to reporters, Michael D. McCurry, a press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he believed Mr. Fleischer may have found a more successful approach: ''To be very, very disciplined and treat the press like caged animals and only feed them on a regular schedule.''

As far as Mr. Fleischer is concerned, the press will never be satisfied.

''I think there is a difference between the press's demand for information and the public's demand for information,'' he said. ''Sometimes I think the press won't be satisfied until there's Oval Cam, and people can watch the president 24 hours a day in the Oval Office.''